Paul Stapleton, Managing Director of NIE Networks talks to Owen McQuade about the challenges in running an electricity network business and how the grid is facilitating the transition to a low carbon energy future. NIE Networks operate the electricity distribution network in Northern Ireland. It is an extensive network of 47,000 km with around 300...

Head of Energy Strategy Division in the Department for the Economy, Joe Reynolds, discusses the challenges facing the development of a future energy strategy for Northern Ireland and the trends affecting its perceived outcomes. Contextualising energy policy in Northern Ireland as being currently caught between the 2010 Strategic Energy Framework and the development of a...

Katy Hayward of Queen’s University Belfast offers her reflections on Brexit, borders and their potential impacts on criminal justice co-operation in Ireland. Opening her presentation, Hayward suggests that many questions remain unresolved in relation to the impact of Brexit on security and criminal justice cooperation in Ireland. Indeed, throughout her analysis she notes that the...

Paul Wickens, Chief Executive of Enterprise Shared Services (ESS) for the Northern Ireland Civil Service (NICS), discusses the journey of digital government in Northern Ireland to date and offers some insight on the future roadmap of three new key strategies. Paul Wickens outlines that a lot has changed since the original concept of nidirect and...

No regulations to protect council minorities

Northern Ireland’s 11 new councils are free to abandon protections for political minorities as the regulations to enforce them have been deferred by the Assembly. The Local Government (Standing Orders) Regulations were brought forward by Environment Minister Mark H Durkan in February but were blocked by a DUP petition of concern.

In recent years, unionist and nationalist representatives have called for formal safeguards for their constituents after contentious decisions on flags, place names, remembrance and the Irish language.

The Local Government Act, introduced in September 2013, allows for a ‘call-in procedure’ whereby 15 per cent of all members could request that a decision be reconsidered.

A call-in can be invoked if the decision is not arrived at after a “proper consideration” of the relevant facts and issues, or would “disproportionately affect adversely” any section of the inhabitants of the district. Once this is submitted, the council clerk is required to obtain an opinion from a practising barrister or solicitor before the decision is reconsidered.

DUP MLA Peter Weir commented: “If we simply go ahead with a system that is entirely carte blanche and has no restriction whatsoever to a call-in mechanism – which will make it simply an automatic qualified majority vote on all occasions – I fear that across local government we may well be storing up trouble for ourselves.”
Durkan contended that, without regulations, there will be inconsistency in how call-in procedures will operate. He regretted that the regulations would not be approved and added that “we will have to go back to the drawing board and possibly look at changes to primary legislation if we are to achieve consensus.”